Meherjan lives in a slum on the Sirajgang Town Protection Embankment. Her plastic roofed shelter looks like a cage.

She is nearly 45 but looks more than her age. In front of her shelter, she is trying to make a fire to cook the days only meal. Her weak hands tremble as she adds some fallen leaves and straw to the fire. The whispering wind from the river Jamuna makes the fire unsteady. The wind becomes stronger. The dancing of the flames reminds Meherjan of the termoils in her life. Not long ago Meher jan had everything, a happy family, cultivatable lands and cattle. The erosion of Jamuna devoured gradually all her landed property. The erosion finally claimed her last shelter during the last monsoon. It took the river only a day to destroy Rokeya's house, trees, vegetable garden and the bamboo bush, the source of income. Now she is only a slum dweller. Over the years, Suruj Jan lost her husband and her family to diseases associated with hunger and poverty. She is the only one left to live on with the loss and the pain. Like Amina, many others are passing miserable days on the embankment with no certain future. The Jamuna river erosion has shattered the dreams and happiness of thousands of people. They now are taking shelter in makeshift houses on the embankment, on the footpath and in the railway station. Erosion is a common phenomenon along the banks of the Jamuna. It brings miseries for many families every year. A good number of families used to live at Mehers village, Paikpara that disappeared into the gorge of Jamuna. Many more villages are threatened by riverbank erosion. Rivers in Bangladesh erode homes and make many people like Suruj Jan and Rokeya homeless and force them to live in poverty. Bangladesh, a low-lying delta

nation of 130 million people, is buffeted by floods and river erosion leaving tens of thousands of people homeless every year. River erosion usually occurs after floods when land becomes soft and the rivers fast. The currents and the waves hit the shores repeatedly to the land to slip into the rivers. Such erosion has wiped out towns and many communities. Towns like Chandpur and Sirajganj are threatened by the river erosion. But one estimate puts at 10 millions the number of people rendered homeless because of river erosion in the country's northern region in the past 20 years. An Asian Development Bank report says that river erosion makes at least 100,000 people homeless every year in Bangladesh. Homelessness caused by river erosion is making people poor and forcing them to come to the cities like Dhaka in search of work and shelter. Most of these people end up taking shelters on pavements. River erosion is also one of the factors of population growth in the cities. Bangladesh is a land of rivers that affect its people. The rivers provide life as well as take it. It is important to devise ways to live with these rivers, which are at once a curse and a blessing for the people of Bangladesh.